Reflections in a Golden Eye

“Lenora Penderton feared neither man, beast, or the devil; God she had never known.”

This quote introduces Leonora’s point of view and her life in general. It invokes mighty figures and archetypes, which suggests that Leonora will be similarly mighty. It soon emerges that she isn’t, but that her reputation is. This first impression is much like the one the Private gets.

“The expression of his mute face had not been changed by his experience, but now and then he narrowed his gold-brown eyes as though he were forming within himself some subtle scheme.”

This quote, which directly references the title of the book, allows readers to look at Private Williams as he looks at Leonora. However, it does not reveal his thoughts or feelings, leaving readers to conjecture based on their understanding of how people work. This is just what Private Williams is doing to Mrs. Penderton: He knows only what his father has told him about women, and nothing about Mrs. Penderton as an individual.

“There were in his mind no plans or thoughts of which he was aware. In him was a deep reflection of the sight he had seen that night when passing before the Captain’s lighted vestibule. But he did not think actively of The Lady or of anything else.”

Reflection is a crucial motif throughout the novel. Here, it represents a particular slice of reality that the Private sees and then distorts the true meaning of. The reflection of Leonora before the fire isn’t a literal mirror image but a memory that the Private absorbs and reinterprets.

“[H]e was just as jealous of his wife as he was of her love. In the last year he had come to feel an emotional regard for the Major that was the nearest thing to love that he had ever known. More than anything he longed to distinguish himself in the eyes of this man.”

This is perhaps the clearest declaration of gay desire that the Captain himself articulates, if only in his own mind. The desire also involves reflection. The Captain wishes to distinguish himself “in the eyes of this man”—i.e., to project an image to the Major that the Major respects, whether or not it is true.

“Since the night she had rushed home and hurt herself, she had felt in her a constant, nauseous shame. She was sure that everyone who looked at her must be thinking of what she had done. But as a matter of fact the scandal had been kept secret [...]”

Alison imagines that everyone else must see in her what she sees in herself, as if she were transparent and her internal life open to everyone. However, others’ image of her is severely limited and abstracted; she is “disturbed” without anyone knowing why. Alison is reflecting her own shame back at herself and can’t discern what others see.

“On the surface the Major naively believed that his wife knew nothing about the affair. However, this soothing thought had become increasingly difficult for him to hold on to; the strain of not realizing the truth had given him hemorrhoids and had almost upset his good digestion.”

The novel closely links mental and physical ailments. The Private and the Captain both suffer physically from their different obsessions—the Captain especially, due to his extraordinary effort to repress his desires. Here, the Major suffers the same thing in a less complicated way, as he is overall a less complicated person.

“When the whole business was over, he could feel nothing except relief. But not Alison! How bitter and cold it had left her! And how damned, damned finicky! Yes, life could be sad.”

The Major remembers his daughter’s death and, as always, misses the point entirely. His point of view is perhaps the most limited of all the characters; he can’t understand others except as they relate to himself. He is sad that the death of their child has changed Alison, but not sad about the child herself.

“He was not really as frisky as he appeared to be this evening. At times his eyes were anxious, and often he shot the Major a glance that was subtle, swift, and accusing.”

This is about as close as the narrative gets to Anacleto’s internal life. What it does depict is Anacleto noticing things. His glances capture who the Major really is.

“He asked for the name in a tone of voice which suggested he did not believe they could possibly screw up one between them. Never would she forget that soldier’s face. At the moment she did not have it in her to speak her husband’s name.”

This soldier confronts Alison and Anacleto just after they find out about Major Langdon’s affair. He stops the car, literally trapping them in the army base, asking for the name of the man who is trapping them both in the army base too. In this moment, the soldier embodies the way the military base hides horror and betrayal under a veneer of normalcy and order.

“This quantity of the drug gave him a unique and voluptuous sensation; it was as though a great dark bird alighted on his chest, looked at him once with fierce, golden eyes, and stealthily enfolded him in his dark wings.”

Another, metaphorical bird with the golden eyes appears here as the Captain falls asleep. When the bird comes close to the Captain, he can finally feel something “voluptuous”—physical and luxurious and pleasurable. Finally, the bird takes him into its wings so that the Captain need not worry about being seen at all: He can feel whatever he wants.

“‘What I find it so difficult to believe is that they know. [...] Madame Alison [...] do you yourself really believe that Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff knows that a chair is something to be sat on and that a clock shows one the time? And if I should take off my shoe and hold it up to his face and say, ‘What is this, Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff? then he would answer, like everyone else, ‘Why, Anacleto, that is a shoe.’ I myself find it hard to realize.’”

Anacleto ponders how even extraordinary people exist in the same ordinary world as everyone else, with shoes and chairs and so on. The novel as a whole exists within this contrast, where sensational events grow out of humdrum everyday routine.

“When Leonora was gone at last, Alison did not know whether to laugh or cry; she did a little of both, rather hysterically. Anacleto came up to her and carefully beat out the big dent at the foot of the bed where Leonora had been sitting.”

Leonora invades Alison and Anacleto’s world with her loud, incorrect assumptions about who they are and what they need. She is ridiculous about it but also oppressive—hence Alison’s reaction.

“Three words were in the Captain’s heart [...] ‘I am lost.’ And having given up life, the Captain suddenly began to live.”

The Captain believes that he is about to lose himself and that everything he has worked for, everything he has repressed himself for, any ounce of respect and dignity and reputation will disappear when he dies. In the instant when he feels it slip away, he is also free to become whoever he wants and feel whatever he likes.

“Out in the forest there, the Captain looked like a broken doll that had been thrown away.”

The Captain is also described as “doll-like” near the end of the novel when he argues with Major Langdon about conformity. In both cases, he is a malformed doll—here “broken,” there “malformed” and “grotesque.” The Captain attempts to conform, but he cannot. At these two moments, where he is finally aware of himself, the Captain breaks down; his true self is hideous to him, “grotesque” like the thing in the peacock’s golden eye.

“The Captain was overcome by a feeling that both repelled and fascinated him—it was as though he and the young soldier were wrestling together naked, body to body, in a fight to death.”

The Captain can’t directly label his desire as such; he knows only that it is “a feeling.” He imagines their bodies struggling together with an intimacy he can’t get any other way. The proximity to death, after the wild horse ride, allows the Captain to imagine doing something far beyond anything he understands. Of course, he and the Private do end in a fight to the death, which this moment foreshadows.

“‘Look! [...] A peacock of a sort of ghastly green. With one immense golden eye. And in it these reflections of something tiny and—’ In his effort to find just the right word he held up his hand [...] His hand made a great shadow on the wall behind him. ‘Tiny and—’ ‘Grotesque,’ she finished for him.”

The peacock’s “golden eye” is the among the golden eyes of the title. To Alison, this golden eye reflects reality, which is grotesque. The other golden eyes, Private Williams’s, also bear reflections—those of Leonora, whom he stalks—but those reflections are grotesque insofar as they relate to his inappropriate behavior.

“Five years before L. G. Williams had killed a man. In an argument over a wheelbarrow of manure he had stabbed a negro to death and hidden the body in an abandoned quarry. […] He had felt a certain wondering, numb distress, but there was no fear in him, and not once since that time had the thought shaped definitely in his mind that he was a murderer.”

The Private’s crime erupted suddenly, without any immediate warning. The novel has alluded to the Private committing some sort of crime in the past, and he is also committing a crime by stalking Leonora. Though this revelation fits into the background the novel has provided, the abrupt, matter-of-fact disclosure is still jarring, much like the Private’s own actions.

“Captain Penderton, who on the whole had lived a most rigid and unemotional life, did not question this strange hate of his. Once or twice, when he awoke late after taking too much Seconal, he made himself uncomfortable by thinking back over his recent behavior. But he made no real effort to force himself to an inward reckoning.”

The Seconal recalls the bird with the golden eye that wraps the Captain in its wings. The bird brings the Captain closer to the center of truth and also closer to sleep, which is symbolically closer to death. It is only then that he recognizes that his recent behavior is odd and questionable.

“The feeling of being trapped [...] made her difficult to care for.”

This matter-of-fact statement says a great deal about Alison’s situation. She feels she is trapped, and that feeling traps her further. She needs care, but much of the care that people around her provide is either useless or actively harmful. Alison is therefore seen as difficult, which makes it even harder for her to express herself.

“She stepped inside the room and switched on the lamp in the corner. The soldier blinked in the light. [...] Leonora stirred in her sleep, murmured, and turned over toward the wall.”

The lamp is a useful analogy for each of these three characters’ roles in the novel. Alison stands right beside the light, where she can see everything. The soldier sees the light as he crouches by Leonora, but it distorts his vision. Leonora is ignorant of it and turns away from it.

“On sitting down to the table she took in the room with one long, wandering gaze. Her eyes, dark and shrewd as always, examined the occupants at all the other tables. Then finally she spoke quietly and with bitter relish: ‘My God, what a choice crew!’”

Major Langdon’s perspective does not grant readers access to what Alison actually thinks and feels. However, he does see her observing things that he doesn’t understand at all, just as she’s been doing the whole time. (Alison is likely thinking about what it means to be at a psychiatric institution, and that her status as a psychiatric patient has some bearing on her identity or associates her with the other patients around her.)

“‘You mean,’ Captain Penderton said, ‘that any fulfillment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness.’”

The Captain synopsizes the Major’s outlook on life. It is a blunt indictment of the oppressiveness of the military base and broader societal expectations. By saying this, the Captain realizes that he disagrees with it; however, this doesn’t give him a way out.

“For once he did not see himself as others saw him; there came to him a distorted doll-like image, mean of countenance and grotesque in form. The Captain dwelt on this vision without compassion. He accepted it with neither alteration nor excuse.”

This moment recalls the “broken doll” that the Captain becomes when he lies down in the woods. This experience, however, is not an ecstatic revelation; instead, he sees himself via his own point of view. The image is “distorted” because the Captain himself is distorted.